• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3835 0

New York City–based supplier of electronics to the cable and satellite television industry. GI had been acquired in a leveraged buyout by Forstmann Little & Company. Ted Forstmann’s unusual talent was in finding companies he believed could be significantly improved by bringing in new management. He raised money from investors, which he would then borrow against to get more funding, so he could purchase companies for what he believed was less than what they could be worth. Forstmann Little would eventually take the company public again at a higher value than its purchase price, pay the original investors and any loans, and use the profit to make still more acquisitions. GI was an interesting challenge, since I knew no more about electronics than I had about pharmaceuticals when I joined Searle. A scientist working for the company, Dr. Woo Paik, had developed a breakthrough technology: the world’s first all-digital high-definition television. Once again Washington intruded. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) effectively forced General Instrument and our partner, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to combine with Zenith, AT&T, Thomson, Philips, RCA, and NBC to form what was called the Grand Alliance for digital high-definition television. The theory was that we would collaborate on fashioning an American standard for HDTV and share in the royalties. Apart from the damage that decision by the FCC did to GI’s leading position—since GI was the company that had developed all-digital HDTV—the government’s unhelpful involvement also contributed to the delay of the technology’s introduction in America for close to a decade.1

In 1992 William Jefferson Clinton defeated President George H. W. Bush when he sought reelection. Clinton, a young Democrat, was elected with less than half of the vote. An intelligent man with excellent political instincts, Clinton had a talent for locking you in his gaze and saying insightful things you were interested in hearing. He had a passion for domestic policy and could hold forth on the subtleties of single-payer health care without losing his audience. But Clinton had a manner somewhat different from presidents I had especially admired, such as Eisenhower, Ford, and Reagan. They were modest people who seemed almost surprised to be in the White House—in Ford’s case, it was genuine surprise. By contrast, Clinton seemed to have been aiming for the presidency practically since childhood, and he appeared not at all surprised that he had attained it.

In his first four years in office, Clinton raised taxes on the American people after promising a tax cut—a reversal that had proven perilous for his predecessor. The Clinton team’s military operation in Somalia ended in retreat and emboldened Islamist extremists. The administration responded indecisively to a series of terrorist attacks, including the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Having confronted the problem of terrorism as President Reagan’s Middle East envoy, I couldn’t help but think back to what had happened in Lebanon and how it had brought America’s credibility into question.

Due to the policies of the Clinton administration—including a plan to have the federal government take over the American health care system—Republicans gained ground during the first years of his term. In 1994, the leadership of a then little known congressman from Georgia named Newt Gingrich brought the GOP control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in decades. Gingrich combined the intellectual firepower of his academic background with a zeal for commonsense solutions. He could rattle off ideas like a machine gun.

The Republican wave continued through 1995. Bob Dole, then serving as the Senate minority leader, became the Republican presidential nominee. With Dole leading Clinton in early polls, a federal government shutdown was blamed on Republicans in Congress, damaging their image. The Clinton political machine launched tough attacks on Dole and the Democrats pulled ahead.

I watched the unfolding campaign from Chicago.